Fantasy sports: How to value Tommy John picks

Saturday

May 24, 2014 at 10:32 PMMay 24, 2014 at 11:13 PM

Josh Bousquet Fantasy Sports

Tommy John won 288 career games with a 3.34 ERA, hitting the 20-win plateau three times and twice finishing second in Cy Young Award balloting. In another era, he would have made a good fantasy player.

He has not pitched for about 25 years, though, so now his legacy involves letting doctors rip tendons from one part of a person's body, move them into the elbow and ruin someone's fantasy roster for a year. That was why one heard a sigh of relief earlier last week when it was announced that Phillies starter Cliff Lee wouldn't need Tommy John surgery.

The numbers of such procedures, though, still seems higher this season. According to mlbreports.com there are 17 players at least scheduled to have the surgery this year, with another two on its watch list as strong possibilities. That is a bit ahead of the pace of 24 for all of 2013, but not wildly beyond the realm of probability.

Maybe then it is the quality of pitcher being taken out that makes it feel bigger.

It must have felt even bigger in Atlanta, which lost Kris Medlen (15-12, 3.11 ERA) and Brandon Beachy (3.23 ERA, 1.13 WHIP in 46 career starts) when they went under the knife in March.

That was a blow to the development of the 27-year-old Beachy, and we can also blame Tommy John for similar blows to 25-year-old Jarrod Parker of Oakland and 24-year-old Patrick Corbin in Arizona in the same month.

Things did not improve much in April as three starters — 24-year-old Matt Moore of the Rays, the Padres' Josh Johnson and 27-year-old Ivan Nova of the Yankees — joined Mets closer Bobby Parnell in needing new elbow pieces.

The blow became bigger this month when last year's NL Rookie of the Year, 21-year-old Jose Fernandez of the Marlins, had his inevitable route to stardom shut down for a year with the need for surgery.

Maybe then it isn't so much the quality of the pitcher being better, but a brand of optimistic, hoped-for growing quality among young starters.

That means that although these pitchers are significant fantasy blows, only Fernandez was supposed to be a clear staff ace and that may be the only loss impossible to come back from. What will be even more interesting about all these players then is how we treat them over the next two seasons.

With so many going through the procedure so early in the season, there are bound to be a couple who are rumored to be ready to pitch again similarly early next year.

Will we trust them? Of course we will. We are fantasy owners, it is in our makeup to believe that even marginal players are ready to put up Hall of Fame numbers.

But then, just how much will we trust them? Enough that I will already label Fernandez and Moore as possible steals next year if their rehab goes well. Even if you have them for only the last couple of months later in season, that will be a significant jolt to a team's hopes.

For even though about 20 percent of major league pitchers who undergo Tommy John surgery never make it back to the big time, Tommy John himself proved what can happen if all goes well. He underwent the procedure in 1974 and missed the 1975 season, but did not retire until after pitching 10 games in 1989 at 46 years old.

Fielder's prospects

Another big name fell to injury this past week, when the Rangers' Prince Fielder went from baseball's current iron man to probably not playing again this season.

Fielder has never been amongst the talk of the best players in the fantasy game, but was always in the top tier, or just short of it, at the powerful first base position. There is strength in that type of player, too, for he doesn't cost enough to ruin your season with some subpar performances, but performs well enough and steadily enough to always at least equal the value it cost to get him.

Until this year anyway, when Fielder had only three homers and 16 RBIs in 42 games, while batting a career-low .247.

Maybe it is a bit merciful then that he has become the latest injury woe for the Rangers, who have used the DL more than any other team in the majors this season.

Since his first full season in the majors in 2006 (see chart), Fielder had never played in fewer than 157 games in a season. Not bad for someone who visually looks like he could be prone to some wearing-down injuries. There's also a genetic component that seemed to make that inevitable.

Instead, Fielder just kept hitting, never recording fewer than 25 homers or 80 RBIs in a season to go with a career batting average of .285.

It is far from certain, but stands to reason that his neck issue could be partially responsible for the dropoff in Fielder's power numbers this season. So let that also place him in my comeback-from-injury sleeper picks for next year.

At this rate, I may never have a body valuable enough to have an experimental surgery named after me, but they should at least honor me with a wing in a convalescent ward.